Just before the lock down in March, one of my friends who is an experienced mountaineer, had a serious and near fatal fall on a mountain in the Lake District. He lost his footing and his six hundred foot fall came to a halt just 20 feet short of a precipice. He was airlifted to hospital with fractures to his neck, left elbow and right ankle, and three deep cuts to his head which required 60 stitches, and a series of lacerations which were described by medics as looking like the gouge of a lion’s claw.
Last week Richard went back to thank the Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) and the A&E Dept. which received him and stabilised his condition. There were gifts, photos and emotional words of thank you. On his Facebook post about his visit there's a photo of Richard and a young nurse. “This is Laura”, he wrote. “She is the A&E nurse who looked after me for the evening after the helicopter delivered me to hospital in Carlisle. And, because I hadn't eaten anything for 12 hours, when Laura finished her shift - at midnight - she went to the 24-hour Tesco and bought me some food to eat and brought it to me on the ward, before heading home. That is called going the extra mile. Be like Laura.”
Richard is a Training Director with the Scottish Episcopal Church. He has spent many years developing mission strategy for the Church, was Principal of International Christian College where I first met him, and is still a key player in the formation of church leaders. What struck me about this story is the coincidence of human brokenness and the habits of kindness. Two people who had never met, are suddenly thrust into a relationship in which one is entirely dependent on the professional skill, and vocational commitment of the other.
Except visiting Tesco after midnight to buy food for a stranger is no part of a nursing degree, or a continuing professional development assignment. Which is a long, roundabout way to that other hillside, where Jesus made the radical suggestion, “If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” Roman soldiers could give that order, and force someone to carry their equipment for a stated distance. People did that. But resented it, and did the minimum required.
Those who are children of God, followers of Jesus seeking to live by the rules of the Kingdom of God, act differently. By going a second mile we turn a duty into a gift, and constraint into freedom. We choose to be considerate, kind, of service to someone, beyond any claim they might have on us.
All of this had me thinking about how hard it is to make sense of what’s been happening these past months. Face coverings, physical distancing, hand hygiene, staying away from crowded places – no wonder folk are getting irritable, anxious, depressed and losing social confidence. And if I ask, “How best can I show the love of God in the shops, on the road, in conversation with neighbours”, perhaps it’s Laura the A&E nurse who has something to teach us about mission, service, grace and the enacted love of God. Go the second mile. Choose to do more than you need to. Live out of an overflow of grace. Make kindness the default setting of each encounter with another person. Use the element of surprise, do the unexpected, because the grace which has touched our lives in Christ is both of these – unexpected, and a surprise.
Have you ever wondered about the God who goes the second mile? “He was rich, but for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor. 8.9) “God demonstrates his own love for us in this way; while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5.8) For Christians, going the second mile isn’t unheard of; it is simply to do things God’s way. Healing for our brokenness, forgiveness for our sins, kindness towards us in Christ, welcome to the least, last and lost, new creation for the heart in the power of the Spirit, springs of living water welling up to eternal life; God did none of that out of necessity, but from love. Grace is the gift of the second mile God, who in Christ came amongst us, walked with us, lived a sinless life of self-giving love, and when sinful humanity, ourselves included, have nothing left to offer, no further steps to take, He walked the second mile for us, to Calvary.
These are difficult times. But they are also times when Christians are called to witness to the God of the second mile. Kindness to anxious shoppers, understanding of people’s fear, attentive to those who struggle with loneliness, patience and restraint with folk who’ve just had enough, and that phone call, card, text, email that interrupts people’s feeling that no one takes much interest in them. As my friend Richard said, “Be like Laura.” As Paul said, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”. Imagine a church being able to be called, by others, not themselves, "The People of the Second Mile"!
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